Retromat: Inspect & Adapt: 108-89-113-24-16

Know your neighbour - Opening (#108)

How did your right neighbour feel during the iteration
Source: Fabián Lewkowicz

Ask each team member to try to briefly describe how their neighbour to the right felt during the iteration. Their neighbour confirms or corrects their guess.
Once all participants said what they think about how their teammates felt, you get an idea of how connected they are, how the communication is flowing in your team and if people are aware of the feelings expressed, in some way, by others.

Consider closing with activity #109.

Retro Wedding (#89)

Collect examples for something old, new, borrowed and blue
Source: Jordan Morris, via Todd Galloway

Analogue to an anglo-american wedding custom ask the team to give examples for the following categories:

Something Old
Positive feedback or constructive criticism on established practice
Something New
Positive feedback or constructive criticism on experiments in progress
Something Borrowed
Tool/idea from another team, the Web or yourself for a potential experiment
Something Blue
Any blocker or source of sadness

One example per sticky note. There's only one rule: If someone contributes to the 'Something Blue' column, s/he must also have a positive comment in at least 1 other column.

Everyone posts their stickies in the appropriate column on the board and describes it briefly.

Set Course (#113)

Imagine you're on a voyage - Cliffs and treasures await
Source: Katrin Dreyer

Imagine you're navigating a boat instead of a product or service. Ask the crew the following questions:

Where is a treasure to be found? (New things worth trying)
Where is a cliff to be safe from? (What makes the team worry)
Keep course for ... (What existing processes go well?)
Change course for... (What existing processes go badly)

Open Items List (#24)

Participants propose and sign up for actions
Source: Corinna Baldauf, inspired by this list

Prepare a flip chart with 3 columns titled 'What', 'Who', and 'Due'. Ask one participant after the other, what they want to do to advance the team. Write down the task, agree on a 'done by'-date and let them sign their name.
If someone suggests an action for the whole team, the proposer needs to get buy-in (and signatures) from the others.

Helped, Hindered, Hypothesis (#16)

Get concrete feedback on how you facilitated
Source: Agile Retrospectives

Prepare 3 flip chart papers titled 'Helped', 'Hindered', and 'Hypothesis' (suggestions for things to try out). Ask participants to help you grow and improve as a facilitator by writing you sticky notes and signing their initials so that you may ask questions later.

Created by Corinna Baldauf

Corinna wished for something like Retromat during her Scrummaster years. Eventually she just built it herself in the hope that it would be useful to others, too. Any questions, suggestions or encouragement? You can email her or follow her on Twitter. If you like Retromat you might also like Corinna's blog and her summaries on Wall-Skills.com.

Co-developed by Timon Fiddike

Timon gives Scrum Trainings. As Integral Coach and Agile Coach he coaches executives, managers, product owners and scrum masters. He has used Retromat since 2013 and started to build new features in 2016. You can email him or follow him on Twitter. Photo © Ina Abraham.